Why we don't have more wind farms in Hawaii

[terracore]

what is the value of the Paris Agreement?

It provides a mechanism to increase taxes, unfortunately it doesn't include any mechanisms that actually decrease pollution:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/o...-agreement
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature...-agreement
http://www.c2es.org/newsroom/articles/wh...ter-cop-21
http://theconversation.com/the-paris-cli...sful-60781

I could go on, but you can use Google.

[leilanidude]

quote:

---

Originally posted by imemine

Wouldn't having an energy source that doesn't produce CO2 as a byproduct have a greater value than the savings of dollars alone? In other words; couldn't we reason that even though solar or wind (or other ideas not listed) might not be dollar for dollar competitive with coal or oil the benefit of not creating greenhouse gases outweighs the potential savings gained by continuing to burn fossil fuels? If not, what is the value of the Paris Agreement?

---

Geothermal is more than competitive vs oil unless the cost has been tied to the "avoided cost of oil" as it was here in Hawaii. We could have had electric bills at less than half the cost of what we pay now.

[Chas]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Kapoho Joe

quote:

---

Originally posted by Chas

Well, I'm surely not going to post a link

---

At least you're learning something.

---

Yeah, I think if I try really really hard, my feeble brain may someday be able to reach 1% of your superior intelligence.

[randomq]

BTW the solar bird deaths are from concentrated solar, the type where a bunch of mirrors focus the sun to drive a steam turbine. Photovoltaic solar is safe, aside from any byproducts of manufacture, and by far the most popular now.

[Eric1600]

quote:

---

Originally posted by terracore

"The APWRA is one of the oldest wind farms in the country and one of the largest in the world originally with around 5,000 turbines. Worldwide, such facilities have been responsible for the deaths of 140,000 to 328,000 birds and 500,000 to 1.6 million bats, raising questions about their effects on population sustainability." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...143808.htm

---

The Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) wind turbines are of an old generation high speed turbines from 1980s. They discovered the need for the slower turbines. Modern turbines don't have this problem and APWRA is slowly being repowered with newer models.

[kalakoa]

Photovoltaic solar is safe, aside from any byproducts of manufacture

Good example of "subsidized by externality": solar panels are cheap nowadays because the Chinese just dump the byproducts in the river.

[tada]

I was watching Ice Road Truckers last week. Grizzled old Alex was surveying the mushy landscape that was the road he was going drive on and he went "I think I see climate change." Now that's the expert I wanted to hear weigh in. Everything on the computer too politically charged. So what we going do about it?

I recall the summer of 2015 felt like wilting down south so hot and humid. HECO had a blackout alert 1 week in August on Oahu. Everybody was blasting the AC but the PV and wind power wasn't kicking in due to the cloudy and still conditions. So maybe that's why HECO sees the future and was trying to get out of the electric utility business??

[terracore]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/...ember-201/

ETA: "Dire predictions that the Arctic would be devoid of sea ice by September this year have proven to be unfounded after latest satellite images showed there is far more now than in 2012.

Scientists such as Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, and Prof Wieslaw Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Moderey, California, have regularly forecast the loss of ice by 2016, which has been widely reported by the BBC and other media outlets.

Prof Wadhams, a leading expert on Arctic sea ice loss, has recently published a book entitled A Farewell To Ice in which he repeats the assertion that the polar region would free of ice in the middle of this decade.

As late as this summer, he was still predicting an ice-free September.

Yet, when figures were released for the yearly minimum on September 10, they showed that there was still 1.6 million square miles of sea ice (4.14 square kilometres), which was 21 per cent more than the lowest point in 2012...."

[Lodestone]

quote:

---

Originally posted by terracore
Yet, when figures were released for the yearly minimum on September 10, they showed that there was still 1.6 million square miles of sea ice (4.14 square kilometres), which was 21 per cent more than the lowest point in 2012...."

---

Yeah, I've seen that report, but also numerous others that insist that the polar ice is rapidly melting. As I recall, the explanation is that mile-thick ice sheets are rapidly calving off, making more icebergs than normal. These icebergs cover a lot of surface area with a relatively thin layer, so while there is more surface area being covered with ice, that actual total volume of polar ice is still diminishing.

Was in Venice a couple years ago, and can personally confirm that St. Mark's square now floods a bit at high tide. While it's possible that the armies of us fat tourists are causing Venice to sink, the more likely explanation is that the seas are rising. They've start to spend serious money to address the issue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSE_Project

Seems every year lately sets a new record high for average global temperatures. If that trend continues, dat ice gonna melt; just a matter of where and when.